Micheal Keaton recently told Empire magazine that watching his iconic character Beetlejuice go mainstream over the years through various merchandising has been “fucking weird.” In order to reprise the role in Tim Burton’s upcoming sequel, Keaton had to actively block out what the character’s popularity has turned him into over the years and return to the reasons why he accepted the role in the first place.
“There’s been so much merchandising of it, I had to drop back to where it started,” Keaton explained. “I had to go, ‘What was my unusual imagination even thinking about when I was developing it in the first place?’ As opposed to seeing a coffee mug or a golf club cover.”
“That was fucking weird,” Keaton added about the character’s popularity. “To be honest with you – I’m being very frank – it was off-putting, to look and go, ‘I don’t want to look like all these little things, fuck that – what was the thing that started this?’”
Keaton reprises the iconic character in Burton’s “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” which also features returning cast members Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara. Jenna Ortega joins the series as the daughter of Ryder’s Lydia Deetz.
“I love it,” Keaton told Empire about the sequel. “I absolutely love this thing. And I don’t usually talk like that. I unabashedly love this. It was not easy to pull off and I think we did it in spades.”
Keaton said on SiriusXM’s “The Jess Cagle Show” in March that he watched a first cut of the “Beetlejuice” sequel and had nothing but raves for it.
“I’ve seen it now. I’m going to see it again after a couple of little tweaks in the editing room, and I confidently say this thing is great,” Keaton said. “The original was so fun and exciting visually. [The sequel is] all that but really beautiful and interestingly emotional here and there. I wasn’t ready for that. It’s great.”
Keaton told People magazine earlier this year that shooting the “Beetlejuice” sequel was “the most fun I’ve had on set in a long time.”
“On one hand, you’d go, ‘Well, of course it’s the most fun. It looks like fun.’ As you know, it doesn’t always work like that,” Keaton said. “The one thing that [Tim] and I decided on early, early, early on from the beginning, if we ever did it again, I was totally not interested in doing something where there was too much technology. It had to feel handmade. It’s the most exciting thing. When you get to do that again after years of standing in front of a giant screen, pretending somebody’s across the way from you, this is just enormous fun.”
Warner Bros. is set to release “Beetlejuice 2” in theaters on Sept. 6.
From Variety US